Norway R6: Three-Way Tie For First as Topalov Beats Kramnik

The Norway Chess tournament is still wide open with three rounds to go. In Monday's sixth round Veselin Topalov defeated arch rival Vladimir Kramnik while the other four games ended in draws. Kramnik is now tied for first place with Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen, who drew with Simen Agdestein and Sergey Karjakin respectively.

Eight years after Toiletgate (the cheating allegations during the 2006 World Championship in Elista), Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik are still not shaking hands. That's all there is to say about it, actually. As Topalov put it: “People are only talking about the handshake but if you exclude that, the games are completely normal. And it's not really the biggest problem of the chess world.”

Besides, on Monday we were also reminded of the fact that life is too short for such silliness. It was the day when British comedian and actor Rik Mayall, star of The Young Ones and Bottom, died, aged 56. Enjoy the video below, and enjoy life! Let's do-oo-oo it!

Back in March, at the Candidates’ Tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Topalov defeated Kramnik as White, but lost the second game as Black. On Monday the Bulgarian was on top again.

In a 4.Nf3 Nimzo-Indian Topalov decided to avoid his opponent's preparation and played a safe bishop swap on f6. After the game the Bulgarian said that he had noticed that Kramnik had problems when he needed to think already in the opening.

And indeed, not only did the Russian spend 48 minutes on his next three moves, his choices were surprising: where the simple 10...exd5 would equalize (fine when leading the tournament!?) and 12...Qe7 would keep things solid, he decided to go for complications with an Exchange sacrifice.

Anish Giri had a theory: “Topalov plays very well when he's an Exchange down so probably [Kramnik] was hoping that he would play badly when he's an Exchange up.”

But that wasn't the case: Topalov played excellent moves which made clear that the sac was hardly correct, and forced resignation (between these two players a matter of “sign the score sheets and walk away” - Topalov) just after the time control.

Kramnik not happy after his game, immediately walking out to his car to drive away from the playing venue. No interviews.

The sixth round was played in the Aarbakke factory in Bryne. (“We deliver advanced turnkey solutions and parts to the oil & gas industry, focusing on subsea and downhole. Aarbakke covers the whole process from engineering to manufacturing, assembly and testing.”)

To the question whether he had won an important game, Topalov answered: “I looked at all the people working here and I thought: when it goes badly, maybe I should just apply for a job here!”

Topalov scores his first win, against Kramnik

Caruana moved back to (shared) first place by drawing his game (“I would have preferred doing that by winning”) with Agdestein from a horrible position out of the opening. What is that former professional football player doing to those top GMs??

An early queen sortie to b6 by Caruana was completely uncalled for, but the Italian only remembered Bc1-e3 after playing his queen. Objectively speaking it might have been better to put the queen back to d8 there, or the next move, but that would make one look pretty silly!

If only Agdestein had seen the maneuver Nd2-c4-a5 before playing c2-c4 (he saw it later), he might have won his very first game. Nigel Short described the position for Black as “stalemate”. In the game Caruana took the very practical decision to give an Exchange and his strong g7-bishop made the day. At the end Caruana was even a bit better, but Agdestein found good squares for his rooks.

The third leader after six rounds is Carlsen, who drew extremely quickly with Karjakin. In a Berlin Ending with 9.h3 (where 9.Nc3 has been the main line for more than a decade) the World Champion switched back to 9...Bd7, his choice against Anand in the Chennai match. In April in Shamkir he had lost to Caruana with 9...h6.

The players followed a game Dominguez-Navara from last year and then at move 18 Carlsen played a novelty that steers the game right to a draw.

Aronian and Giri got a standard IQP middlegame position that can be reached from many different move-orders - Chessbase calls theirs “Queen's Gambit Declined: Semi-Tarrasch with 5.cxd5”. As it turned out, Giri knew more about it than his opponent! “Anish tricked me in the opening by not playing what he so convincingly played against Magnus,” said Aronian, who had recovered from his loss against Carlsen by listening to some Bill Evans.

The ...Nc6-e7-g6 maneuver is still standard, but the strong ...Bf6-e7! came unexpected for the world's number two. “I don't know if I would have found it but I knew it,” said Giri. And then, after a tactic on move 23, it became clear that Aronian needed to fight for a draw which wasn't so difficult because there was no way for Giri to avoid an opposite-colored bishop ending.

The opening in Grischuk-Svidler, a Symmetrical English, was quite interesting when White came up with the energetic 11.b4!? - only played once in a correspondence game. Svidler's reaction looks decent, although White might have had an advantage somewhere.

Norway Chess 2014 | Pairings & Results

Round 1

03.06.14

15:30 CET

Round 2

04.06.14

15:30 CET

Aronian

½-½

Agdestein

Aronian

1-0

Karjakin

Karjakin

½-½

Topalov

Kramnik

½-½

Carlsen

Grischuk

0-1

Caruana

Caruana

1-0

Svidler

Carlsen

½-½

Giri

Topalov

0-1

Grischuk

Svidler

½-½

Kramnik

Agdestein

½-½

Giri

Round 3

05.06.14

15:30 CET

Round 4

07.06.14

15:30 CET

Karjakin

½-½

Agdestein

Aronian

½-½

Svidler

Grischuk

1-0

Aronian

Karjakin

1-0

Grischuk

Svidler

½-½

Topalov

Caruana

½-½

Giri

Carlsen

½-½

Caruana

Topalov

½-½

Carlsen

Giri

0-1

Kramnik

Agdestein

½-½

Kramnik

Round 5

08.06.14

15:30 CET

Round 6

09.06.14

15:30 CET

Grischuk

½-½

Agdestein

Aronian

½-½

Giri

Svidler

½-½

Karjakin

Karjakin

½-½

Carlsen

Carlsen

1-0

Aronian

Grischuk

½-½

Svidler

Giri

1-0

Topalov

Topalov

1-0

Kramnik

Kramnik

1-0

Caruana

Agdestein

½-½

Caruana

Round 7

10.06.14

15:30 CET

Round 8

12.06.14

15:30 CET

Svidler

-

Agdestein

Aronian

-

Caruana

Carlsen

-

Grischuk

Karjakin

-

Kramnik

Giri

-

Karjakin

Grischuk

-

Giri

Kramnik

-

Aronian

Svidler

-

Carlsen

Caruana

-

Topalov

Agdestein

-

Topalov

Round 9

13.06.14

14:30 CET

Carlsen

-

Agdestein

Giri

-

Svidler

Kramnik

-

Grischuk

Caruana

-

Karjakin

Topalov

-

Aronian

Norway Chess 2014 | Round 6 Standings

#

Name

Rtg

Perf

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

Pts

SB

1

Kramnik,Vladimir

2783

2821

½

1

½

1

0

½

3.5/6

11.00

2

Carlsen,Magnus

2881

2840

½

½

½

½

½

1

3.5/6

10.25

3

Caruana,Fabiano

2791

2823

0

½

½

½

1

1

3.5/6

10.25

4

Agdestein,Simen

2628

2784

½

½

½

½

½

½

3.0/6

9.25

5

Karjakin,Sergey

2771

2773

½

½

1

½

0

½

3.0/6

8.75

6

Giri,Anish

2752

2778

0

½

½

½

1

½

3.0/6

8.75

7

Grischuk,Alexander

2792

2755

0

½

0

1

1

½

3.0/6

7.75

8

Topalov,Veselin

2772

2731

1

½

½

0

0

½

2.5/6

8.00

9

Aronian,Levon

2815

2705

0

½

1

½

0

½

2.5/6

7.25

10

Svidler,Peter

2753

2729

½

0

½

½

½

½

2.5/6

7.25

The Norway Chess tournament runs 2-13 June in the Stavanger region. All photos courtesy of the official website | Games via TWIC

Comments

If Nakamura will be playing in this tournament Carlsen will have a +1 advantage. So I'm happy that Nakamura did not played in this tournament, he always loses against Carlsen even when he has a clear advantage. This makes it easy for Carlsen to win tournaments where Nakamura plays. Just remember the last tournament where Nakamura lost twice vs Carlsen.

you fail to even mention that there occurred at the time a MAJOR volcanic "ash storm" which grounded all airlines and closed most major airports worldwide thus complicating anand's timely arrival for the match and that bulgarian officials accommodated this by postponing the first game some 2 days

Kramnik and Topalov are the Hatfield and McCoy of chess. Any competition wherein draws are a possible outcome (hockey, chess, soccer.....I mean futbol), it's good to have a kind of running sub-plot, a sideshow so to speak, to make things interesting when the action starts to drag. In hockey, there are the fights: sticks smashed over heads, noses busted, teeth go flying. Now in chess there's Kramnik and Topalov, with toiletgate, the verbal sniping and 'no-handshake' stuff. And in soccer there's, well......... I don't know. Nice shirts, I guess?!

I think Kramnik may have let emotion get the better of him - I am sure he would love to crush Topalov with black, but according to GM Short "the exchange sac and a pawn up wasn't enough compensation for Topalovs total domination of the c-file (also the old chess adage, knights on the 5th rank are overated in open play)"

"Topalov smartly avoided trading his LSBishop for this 5th rank knight" (the reasons for this are beyond my competence) Anyone want to help with that?

We also forget that Topalov was once 2820+ and very much Kramniks equal.

It seems Kramnik has taken on the persona of Mikhail Tal of late. Im sure he has been aggressive in previous games with Tal like exchange sacrafices, but lacking the finesse of Tal in the final outcome.

Kramnik tried to win with black - making exchange sacrifice on move 12. In superGM level they normally play for draw with black pieces - at least in the opening. it seems, Kramnik thought more about rivalry than tournament lead!

Help us finish translating:

We are working hard to make Chess.com available in over 70 languages. Check back over the year as we develop the technology to add more, and we will try our best to notify you when your language is ready for translating!